NYT Op-Ed: Beware Generals Bearing a Grudge

[Michael Pollak <mpollak@xxxxxxxxx>]

[Nice history lesson]

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/opinion/13SMIT.html

February 13, 2004
Beware Generals Bearing a Grudge

   By JEAN EDWARD SMITH

   H UNTINGTON, W.Va.

   In pulling out of the Democratic presidential race, Gen. Wesley Clark
   ended what was once a promising quest to join the long line of men who
   converted battlefield prominence into political victory. The military
   is one of the traditional springboards to the White House: 12 former
   generals have been president, six of them career military men (only
   lawyers have done better). Yet no general has ascended to the Oval
   Office for half a century.

   So is the demise of the Clark campaign another sign that in the urban,
   affluent, white-collar America of today the armed forces no longer
   hold enough respect to sell their best and brightest to the
   electorate? Probably not. Wesley Clark was never an heir to the
   tradition of Andrew Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant. Rather, his military
   career and personality fit neatly into a different military category:
   generals who became political also-rans.

   First, consider the qualities of the six career generals who won the
   White House. They were national icons swept into office on a tide of
   popular enthusiasm. George Washington was a unanimous choice of the
   Electoral College. Andrew Jackson, victor at New Orleans, led the
   crusade for democratic reform. William Henry Harrison won enduring
   fame at the Battle of Tippecanoe, as did Zachary Taylor at Buena
   Vista. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower led citizen armies to victory in
   the two greatest wars the nation has faced. In each case, the office
   sought the man, not vice versa.

   Yet, surprisingly, these men shared a gift for managing men quietly.
   Their warm personalities cast a glow over their subordinates. They
   took their jobs seriously, but not themselves. Eisenhower, Taylor and
   Grant were ordinary men who did extraordinary jobs. They commanded
   unobtrusively, did not posture for the press or pronounce on matters
   of public policy. All were highly intelligent but resisted putting
   their intelligence on display. Their military dispatches were crisply
   written in unadorned English. And if given orders they disagreed with,
   they complied without complaint.

   Taylor, "Old Rough and Ready," rarely wore a uniform. Grant was most
   at ease in the blouse of a private soldier. The Ike jacket of World
   War II was designed for comfort, not ceremony. All three identified
   with the citizen-soldiers they led, and each was adored by the armies
   they commanded. They worked easily with their superiors and their
   skill at human relations transferred readily from war to politics.

   By contrast, famous generals who lost the presidency including
   Winfield Scott, John C. Frémont, George McClellan, Winfield Scott
   Hancock, Leonard Wood and Douglas MacArthur ran to prove themselves
   right. All had clashed with their civilian superiors, and their
   campaigns imploded for the same reasons that led to those clashes:
   assertions of intellectual superiority, moral certitude and the lack
   of a common touch. They were men who made a point of standing apart.
   They possessed messianic confidence in the correctness of every
   position they adopted, and had difficulty adjusting to views contrary
   to their own. To put it simply: they took themselves very seriously.

   Temperament tells the difference. The also-rans were singular
   achievers. MacArthur finished first in his class at West Point,
   McClellan second. MacArthur and Leonard Wood won the Medal of Honor.
   Frémont mapped the Oregon Trail. Scott, a major general at 27, was the
   Army's general in chief for two decades. (Only Hancock seems in
   temperament more like those who won the presidency thus it is not
   surprising that he came closest to getting the job, losing to James A.
   Garfield by 7,000 votes in 1880.)

   Each of the also-rans shared the distinction of having been relieved
   of his command or placed on the shelf by higher authority. Winfield
   Scott, after capturing Mexico City and subduing the Mexican army, was
   summarily relieved by President James Polk in 1848; he suffered a
   crushing electoral defeat at the hands of Franklin Pierce four years
   later. Frémont was not only relieved of his command, but
   court-martialed and convicted for insubordination and mutiny in 1848
   (Polk granted him clemency). He became the Republican nominee for
   president in 1856, losing to James Buchanan.

   After Lincoln removed McClellan as commander of the Army of the
   Potomac, the "Young Napoleon" became an outspoken critic of Lincoln's
   conduct of the war and ran against the president in 1864. Winfield
   Scott Hancock was relieved by Grant as military governor of Louisiana
   for being too lax in enforcing Reconstruction.

   Leonard Wood charged up San Juan Hill with Theodore Roosevelt in the
   Spanish-American War and was appointed Army chief of staff in 1910.
   Wood wore out his welcome at the Wilson White House and was not
   reappointed when his term expired, and was forced to spend World War I
   at a training camp in the United States. He led the first eight
   ballots at the 1920 Republican convention before delegates broke for
   Warren G. Harding. Douglas MacArthur was of course relieved by
   President Harry S. Truman for insubordination during the Korean War
   and returned to give a triumphal speech to a joint session of
   Congress. He entered several Republican primaries in the 1952 race,
   but found little resonance for his candidacy.

   MacArthur, McClellan and Winfield Scott in particular were great
   soldiers. But their school of command rested on charisma. Their
   dispatches were cast in heroic prose, designed with an eye to future
   historians. Scott, "Old Fuss and Feathers," wore all the uniform the
   law allowed. McClellan and MacArthur always dressed for the occasion.
   All three insisted on ultimate command; this can be a valuable
   military virtue, but it is scarcely a skill transferable to the
   political arena.

   Wesley Clark has more than a little in common with those whose
   political ambitions met frustration. A Rhodes Scholar who led his
   class at West Point, he was not a team player. He wore his ambition on
   his sleeve. He fought heroically in Vietnam but was made to sit out
   the Persian Gulf war at a training command in California. The
   leadership passed him over for duty with the joint staff in
   Washington, and he was not the Army's first choice to take over
   military command of NATO in the 1990's. Famously, he was relieved of
   his NATO command by President Bill Clinton after he clashed repeatedly
   with his military and civilian superiors.

   During the campaign, comments by his former colleagues cemented this
   picture. Gen. Hugh Shelton, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
   Staff, questioned General Clark's character and integrity. Former
   Defense Secretary William Cohen reportedly said he believed selecting
   General Clark for the NATO job was one of the worst decisions he ever
   made. Even Gen. John Shalikashvili, who as chairman of the Joint
   Chiefs was General Clark's most powerful supporter in the military,
   acknowledged that he "lacked the warmth and humanity that truly great
   commanders need."

   On the campaign trail, General Clark remained tightly wound, pitting
   his drive and intellect against the system. The same question that
   dogged him during his military career continued to arise: Does Wes
   Clark have a goal other than Wes Clark? I was most struck when he told
   The New Yorker that he became a Democrat because Karl Rove, the Bush
   White House adviser, never returned his calls. It is easy to imagine
   George McClellan saying something similar.

   Jean Edward Smith, a professor at Marshall University and author of
   "Grant," is writing a biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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